Moviegoers familiar with the Martha-Mary Chapel at Longfellow's Wayside Inn in Sudbury may be tempted to speak up if they see the film "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past."

Bob Tremblay

Moviegoers familiar with the Martha-Mary Chapel at Longfellow's Wayside Inn in Sudbury may be tempted to speak up if they see the film "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past."

PHOTOS: A look back at last year's "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" filming

"I've seen that place," they might proclaim. "I've been in there," they may boast.

A wedding scene in the romantic comedy takes place in the famous chapel while an exterior shot shows Matthew McConaughey, one of the film's stars, emerging from nearby woods.

The movie, which opens Friday, May 1, and also stars Jennifer Garner, Michael Douglas and Breckin Meyer, offers a twist on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" with McConaughey playing a bachelor who gets haunted by the ghosts of his former girlfriends. He exit the woods with the Ghost of Girlfriends Future played by Olga Maliouk.

The crew from New Line Cinema arrived early in the morning last April and stayed late into the night, according to Guy LeBlanc, Wayside Inn's museum services coordinator. "Once they got here, they wanted us out of the way," recalls LeBlanc, who was given a radio by the production crew to provide him with updates.

The chapel site was proposed by film scout Mark Fitzgerald. "He grew up in Framingham so when he founded out a chapel was needed for the film he knew the Martha-Mary Chapel would be perfect," says LeBlanc.

Located on a knoll surrounded by white pines, the white chapel was built by boys from the Wayside Inn Boys' School run by Henry Ford when he owned the property. Wood for the chapel came from trees felled by the Hurricane of 1938. The first wedding celebrated in the chapel took place in 1941. The building takes its name from the mothers of Ford and his wife Clara Martha Bryant and Mary Litogot Ford. It's one of only six non-denominational chapels in the United States.

LeBlanc says the scene where McConaughey leaves the woods and walks to the chapel was "shot around 15 times." While public access to the stars was limited, LeBlanc says a member of the inn's waitstaff approached McConaughey and asked if he would pose for a picture with her.

"He said, 'If I let you take a picture, everyone will want a picture,' but he let her friend take it anyway," says LeBlanc.

Garner arrived on the set in a Cadillac Escalade, according to LeBlanc. "She rolled down the window and said, 'Good morning,' to us with a big smile," he remembers.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Ben Affleck was originally attached to play the lead back in 2003 before the film got sidetracked and "Gigli" haunted Affleck's career. The Cambridge-raised actor married Garner in 2005.

LeBlanc notes that "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" isn't the first movie to use the Martha-Mary Chapel as a film site. He says that honor belongs to "HouseSitter," a 1992 movie starring Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn.

Interestingly, only a few weeks after "Ghosts" finished shooting, the chapel was used again for a movie location. In May, the film was known as "This Side of the Truth." It's now called "The Invention of Lying" and is scheduled to be released in September. A comedy, the film stars Ricky Gervais, Rob Lowe and, as coincidence would have it, Garner.

Without providing a specific amount, LeBlanc described the inn's compensation for each movie as being "in the thousands."

He adds that shooting "Ghosts" in April posed "greenery issues" for the filmmakers as the lawn at the time was seasonally brownish in color. No problem, the crew simply painted the lawn green.

The Newton resident says watching crew members work they numbered around 80 reminded him of an ant colony with each member assigned to a specific task.

Apart from the greener lawn, the inn property looked just as it did before the crew arrived, according to LeBlanc. "It's like they weren't even there," he says.